Dusky - Yoohoo / Akebono

Dusky - Yoohoo / Akebono
Is there an app called Make An Essential New Tune? One where you rearrange elements, click a button and then—whoosh! There's Pete Tong's record of the week for your enjoyment. On the evidence of "Yoohoo," Dusky may already be beta-testing it. Heavy, crowd-pleasing kicks? Garagey snares? A familiar vocal loop (here culled from pop drum & bassers Kosheen)? It has them all. All it's missing is a dose of Italo piano to send the older listeners misty-eyed on the drive home—until that arrives, too. And yet for all the predictability in Dusky's latest offering, you can't help but warm to their never-ending quest to make anthem after anthem. They're like a rave version of the Brill Building songwriters.

Dusky toughen things up with the dark house of "Akebono." If you have a passing knowledge of sumo wrestling, then its title rather telegraphs its intentions. Like the legendary dump truck-sized American fighter of the same name, it hits the floor with an almighty thump, displaying the sort of enthusiastic regard for punishing, runaway beats that Underworld once dealt in. Such is its stripped back nature—a groaning synth line aside, there's little else to it—you'd be forgiven for thinking that the lead track was the work of a different artist altogether.